ST robots are not educational robots and we never expected to sell them as such. nevertheless a substantial number of our robot arms have been purchased by universities and colleges all over the world, particularly in the USA, and often re-ordered. Why is this?
Transparency
ST robots are not designed for transparency. It is a fact that a student may not learn from our robots about dynamics, PID feedback, kinematics. It's all done for you. However the majority of students will never get to design robots in the real world. It's much more likely they will be using robots. Students need to learn how to apply and program robots for real world tasks. It is analogous to computers - while some may be interested in how they work, the real world requires that they know how to use them.
Real World
Students need to learn how to solve real world appplications that they will find in industry and research. Industrial users are not interested in the inner workings; they want to get a job done. Our software does not waste time with offline programming, feedback loops, multi-axis kinematics that are of little use on the factory floor. ST software provides tools such as Cartesian coordinates, pose teaching and editing, continuous path control, palletising (matrices), I/O interfacing, interrupts, timing.
More importantly ST software uniquely gets the student up and running fast. Control of the robot is immediate and intuitive. There is an immediate response to everything the student does - no lengthy preparation or programming before anything even moves. One educational robot we are aware of claims "You can plug it into a PC and start work in under 30 minutes". With an ST robot you can be up and running in 3 minutes.
Even though getting started with an ST robot is fast and easy there are a lot of things you can do. This means there is a lot of software. You may need only a fraction of it but it's all there if you need it. Want to see what students have accomplished using our robots? Please see some of their work in these videos, also Tormach at the University of Iowa
Coursework
ST has a specially written course if required (see right). It is a spiral bound landscape format book with 48 pages. Each student gets his/her own copy and registers their copy with ST. The cost is very low - please call Mathew Monforte in our Princeton office for current pricing.
There is also a complete and thorough tutorial for advanced users.
David Sands on robot maths
Schools
ST has designed a kit based on Meccano/Erectorset that schools can use to teach basic robotics. It is a complete kit comprising 3D CAD software, parts, servos, an ARM based controller and a mini version of RoboForth. See Go Forth in Robotics
